1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to devices and methods for improving the delivery of patient information and care to patients, particularly to transactions involved in utilizing a non-invasive monitoring system to deliver physiological information to patients and patients"" service providers.
2. Description of Related Art
Numerous diseases require the monitoring of various physiological attributes of a patient. These attributes such as blood glucose level and other blood analytes"" level are invaluable to patients and health service providers such as doctors, medical professions, pharmacies, researchers, insurance companies, and government agencies.
Particularly in patients with diabetes, monitoring the level of blood glucose is extremely important in controlling the patient""s health, and decreasing or delaying the damaging effects of uncontrolled blood glucose. Diabetes is a disease in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin, which results in the increase uptake of glucose from the blood across cell membranes. About sixteen million people in the United States are diabetics. The American Diabetes Association reports that diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States. The complications of the disease include blindness, kidney disease, nerve disease, heart disease, and death.
Specifically, for diabetes, monitoring various physiological attributes is essential for diabetic patients. For example, it is essential that patients practice frequent self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG). Based upon the level of glucose in the blood, individuals may make insulin dosage decisions before injection. Monitoring the trends in blood glucose over time provides health care providers with invaluable information on the adequacy of therapy, the compliance of the patient and the progression of the disease. However, the prior systems of glucose monitoring usually requires obtaining blood from a finger stick (invasive method) or obtaining body fluids (other than blood) and subcutaneous tissue (also an invasive method). Now, an optical non-invasive glucose monitoring system, as illustrated in a related co-pending U.S. patent application entitled xe2x80x9cInfrared ATR Glucose Measurement System (II),xe2x80x9d U.S. application Ser. No. 09/547,433, by Herbert L. Berman and Jeffrey N. Roe, owned by the assignee of this application and incorporated herein by reference, provides a solution for non-invasively gathering of blood glucose information for diabetic patients. Use of a non-invasive technology rather than an invasive technology permits a significantly better approximation to continuous monitoring, which in turn may contribute significantly to improved health care for diabetic patients.
Therefore, it is advantageous to have a monitoring system that leverages on the non-invasive glucose-measuring device to provide a medium for sharing of the monitored information.